As authorities intensified searches on Tuesday for eastern Plaquemines Parish residents who may have perished in Isaac's floodwaters, an all too familiar symbol appeared on east bank homes -- the spray-painted "X" whose quadrants list the date the home was searched, who searched it, hazards that may exist within, and then, the dreaded bottom quadrant: body count. So far, only two bodies have been discovered, both found on Thursday in the same Scarsdale Road home in Braithwaite.
John Marie, the parish coroner's investigator, said on Tuesday that the coroner has confirmed that they died by drowning. Marie identified one victim as Ann E. George, 60, a former Tulane University librarian. Authorities are withholding the name of the second victim, a man in his 50s or 60s, until his next of kin is notified.
George's brother, Dr. Samuel George, who lives in Tennessee, said his sister didn't have a car and that she'd moved to Braithwaite from the lower Garden District in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He said his sister was in poor health.
The victims were found floating in a second-floor kitchen. A Scarsdale neighbor who had feared that the two people hadn't evacuated, told parish sheriff's officials of their whereabouts when he was evacuated to a Belle Chasse shelter.
Neighbors said the woman was renting half of the Scarsdale home after moving there from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Neighbors described them as "good people." Meanwhile, water in eastern Plaquemines continued to recede on Tuesday making it easier for sheriff's officials and the National Guard to examine homes' interiors from the St. Bernard Parish line to White Ditch, where the majority of east bank flooding occurred.
On, Tuesday, water was estimated about 3 feet high in Braithwaite, as opposed to about 13 feet at the height of the storm and 7 feet on Saturday. While residents continued to be transported to Braithwaite homes in airboats to see the damage and retrieve needed possessions, areas further south, around the storm-damaged Stolthaven New Orleans chemical plant, continued to have a half-mile cordoned off to test for contaminants.
Rodney Mallett, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality spokesman, said Tuesday afternoon that air monitoring was continuing but no off-site impacts had been detected.
The Coast Guard, State Police and other local and state agencies are joining the effort and Stolthaven contractors are working to manage any releases, Mallett said. DEQ responders are assessing orphaned containers in the area, some from the Stolthaven facility.
DEQ is overseeing all sampling plans and reviewing all data for air monitoring, air and water sampling, Mallett said.
